James January-February 2025 web - Flipbook - Page 46
paper, to hiring the team, finding the
real estate and signing six new leases
to have restaurants open in 2002— all
of which was accomplished within a
year. McKerrow created the concept,
the architecture, the spirit, the ambiance, that’s really where his talents
come into play along with the menu.
He created many of the menu items.
For the restaurant to be a success,
there had to be more than just putting
bison on the table. But that restoration
served as a great foundation.
“I just felt like bringing bison to
America’s table through a restaurant
was the right way to go and that it
would create demand at the grocery
store level when people ate it properly
cooked and properly prepared, which
turned out to be absolutely true,” said
McKerrow.
THE MEAT OPTION
At first, few people were aware of
bison as a meat option. Some people
had tried it as a bit of a novelty and
education experiment at Yellowstone
but it was not widely available at all.
Oftentimes, as McKerrow noted, it
would be overcooked and not very
good. Bison meat is much leaner than
regular cattle beef but people would
still cook it like a regular burger or
steak. People were also just generally
wary of a “new” meat and unsure of
trying something new.
“When we started the company,
our research that we did across the
country told us that women thought
it was reminding them of something
their husband drug out of the woods,”
McKerrow remembers. “Men were not
going to eat it because they wanted
to eat their beef steaks and people
thought it was an endangered species,
and it reminded them of Bambi. We
dispelled all those rumors.”
McKerrow had four clear goals
in mind. One was to save the great
American bison, which is now the
national mammal. Number two was
to help the bison ranchers that had
gone into business and then had no
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market to sell their product, so they
were going broke. Number three
was to create a financial foundation
for future generations of the Turner
family so that they could hold on to
the 2 million acres of land that Ted
had accumulated. And number four
was to create a profitable restaurant
company they all could be proud of.
BISON HIGHLY PROFITABLE
“We’ve accomplished all those
goals. There’s twice as many, almost
three times as many bison alive in the
world today as when we started. Bison
is available in every grocery store
in America. For the most part, bison
ranching is a lucrative, healthy financial business for people to be in today,”
said McKerrow. “Bison has gone from a
dollar a pound to close to $5 a pound.
It is a highly profitable business. And
to give you an idea, there’s approximately a hundred million cattle in the
United States alone, and there’s about
600,000 bison in the world.”
In addition to the wild success
of Ted’s Montana Grill, Atlanta-area
readers are probably also aware of
two other McKerrow restaurants he
is still involved with, Canoe and Aria.
He started those during his time at
LongHorn as more boutique, fine-dining options in Atlanta. Canoe has a
particularly special place in his heart
because McKerrow lives almost right
